


Wildflower Sunsets

by Blue_Jay



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Dysfunctional Family, Episode: s09e01 I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here, Fallen Angels, Family Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Heaven, Home, Human Castiel, grand canyon - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2018-01-01 17:44:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Jay/pseuds/Blue_Jay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hael is newly human and down here, with her younger brother and a whole world made sharp by pain and necessity, everything feels bright and beautiful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wildflower Sunsets

**Author's Note:**

> I just really liked Hael, basically, and thought she died way too early. This is an ode to what should have happened, where Cas can't reach the Winchesters, decides to help Hael whose vessel isn't falling apart, and they go on a roadtrip to the Grand Canyon. 
> 
> Also, I have a headcanon that Cas is the youngest angel raised by Michael, Lucifer, and Gabriel, and was basically fledgling when Lucifer Fell, so he saw his family fall apart early on and that's why he's so messed up and this plays off that.

Her name is Hael and her vessel is twenty years younger than his, so they say she is his daughter even though he is her youngest brother. He has made many mistakes in the past, but when he asked her, "Would you like to me take you there?" those eyes of his, blue as the sea as Michael always said so fondly when he just a fledgling, speak  _if I could save but one_ , and she knows that angels are meant to forgive. Somewhere along the way they had forgotten that. 

She accepted his out held hand, and it was so human and warm - as was his smile and the drop of his shoulders, heavy from the wings he no longer he has. It is a Thursday in May, the birthday of Lucifer's failed vessel, and he promised to take her to her creation. Castiel is the youngest brother raised by archangels she never had much chance to interact with. 

But that should not mean she loves him any less. 

 

 

They first place they stop is not far into their journey because there is a nun at a church who went blind as a child and in her sightlessness, she senses their fading Grace; she takes them in. Uriel always preached the ugliness of humanity, which she has no doubtfully seen, but already she is witnessing goodness too.

"Clarence and Harper Winchester," Castiel tells the nun and she feels a deep sadness at his apparent familiarity with lies, but this is their protection. When she asked why he chose the name Clarence, he evaded answering. "We are very grateful, Sister Julia."

In little time at all, Sister Julia has them bathed in what is called a shower, which Castiel teaches her how to work, as they are now human, and given a place for a night's rest. In the morning, both are given small bags of clothing and Hael is nearly useless in this body but with the assistance of her brother, they heal the kind woman's cancer as gratitude. The time she has is not much more, but it is enough to see her niece's wedding dated for two years in the future according to the conversation over their dining. All the other nuns and priests must think them strange, perhaps, and Castiel becomes very weak, but she helps him and they are on their way again. 

It has not been long. Yet what Hael feels is the thing humans describe as "fun," she thinks.

 

 

After two days, they reach the Grand Canyon. 

Her greatest creation is different from then she remembers, but no less beautiful. They stand together, alone on the edge and ready to fall and she knows that one step forward and she could die. It stretches on beyond where her human eyes can see, colors blending and ridges dipping, sharp ledges and slopes and water and endless, endless bottoms with far away horizons. Castiel catches her when she begins to pitch forward and collapse to her knees, sitting delicately with her. 

As he places her head beneath his chin, he says, "Look at it, Hael. It's yours. It's all yours."

In the distance, there are humans laughing and the sound is fragile - broken wings, Grace twisting through the air towards her home. Once she listened to laughter as other angels listened to prayers. "Age has made it beautiful," she answers quietly, her eyes straining as she looks beyond the capacity of what a human see. "I had feared my Fall would make it hideous."

It is a thought she dared not admit to herself and certainly not voice to her brother. "Sometimes humanity makes everything clearer," he says, and yes, it is so entirely beautiful in its complexities and simplicities and she feels a fierce, almost sinful pride at having been the sculptor of a creation such as this. "In my time here, I've learned that at times things are...greater because they change. They're fleeting. Humans see this as just rock but it's different than what you originally made, correct? Hael, you gave life to a place where there shouldn't be any."

He speaks like a human. He's changed. There are tears streaming down her face because maybe, just maybe, in these four days,  _she is changing too._

Like this, she understands free will. 

 

 

"DEAN MICHAEL WINCHESTER, WHAT DID YOU DO TO YOUR BROTHER?"

Hael does not know much about the Winchester brothers outside of the rumors and complaints and reverence other angels have, but Castiel's sudden shout that breaks the stillness of the night air makes her shake. There is a moment of silence before her brother says in a quieter voice, "Don't try, Dean, you were open to the idea of me staying and bring - yes, I understand that Sam is ill. Maybe then the best course of actions is  _not to bring him hunting for Abaddon._ "

When she had long reached maturity and Castiel was barely above the years of a fledging, Michael and Raphael had eradicated all the Knights of Hell. The other archangels were lost during the battle and Abaddon somehow survived. Her existence was only discovered recently before she once again disappeared. Hael would be lying if she said the idea of the Knight alive did not frighten her. 

Castiel sighs. "This is a poor decision, but I don't suppose you listen to me in the first place. May at least  _speak_ with him - Hello, Sam." This conversation is quieter, her human ears unable to hear from this distance and she already feels as though she is intruding on something private. 

This conversation is also considerably shorter and he returns to her soon. "One of my friends is...very sick," he tells her and he seems quite angry, though not at the illness. "Receiving help simply won't be possible. We will need jobs of our own if we'd like to do anything worthwhile."

"Do humans use currency for everything?" she asks as he holds out his hand to help her up. A distinctly human gesture.

"Unfortunately," he answers dryly, and she accepts his assistance in more ways than one.

 

 

Castiel was the only angel brought into existence after humanity, though not by much, and yet Hael finds herself the pupil and him the teacher. He is also Clarence and she Harper and their last name is still Winchester in case his friends would like to find him. She finds this very sad, and very brilliant in its optimism. 

He finds work at a "convenience store," which he is not terribly good at but everyone finds him quite endearing anyway, and she at a "diner" as a "waitress," which is requires "people skills" she lacks but her balance is excellent and she does very well bringing humans their food in a timely manner. At their first paychecks, they are able to open a bank account, which results in another call to the Winchesters. Hael knows not what happened in particulars, but the brothers were able to help enough from far away to give them more money and paperwork proclaiming them real people; they have the capability lease a small apartment in town.

One day, in these lodgings of theirs while they eat dinner and drink water, he says, "Here they call me Cas, not Castiel."

She pauses in her fork twirling, which she discovered is the only proper way to eat spaghetti. "Who are 'they?'" she asks. 

"Dean, Sam," he answers. "Their friends before they died - hunting results commonly in death. It's called nicknaming. People like to do it. Some angels did, too."

In this form, with her human eyes, she sees not tattered Grace but the body of his vessel. James Novak, as the man's name was before he too died (Castiel is the only angel she knows of to have been reborn), is considerably older than her body and she finds this disorienting. She is his older sister, not his younger one. "Balthazar and Anna did the same," she says, remembering, though this is a vague notion as the only one she spoke to was her sister. "And Michael and Gabriel...?"

As of now, his fleglinghood has been an unspoken subject. "They, uh, called me Cassie," he says, though his words are unclear and embarrassed, and he quickly includes, "If Sam and Dean ever visit, you're not allowed to speak a  _word_ of this, okay, Hael?"

She finds an unexpected need to laugh come over her and it bubbles once, twice, before spilling completely. Castiel buries his head in his hands as if he this that will hide him.

 

 

When Castiel was first created, he appeared from nowhere in the middle of a garrison meeting. The archangels were all there, as well as many other angels but not all, and Hael did not have a clear vantage point. Before Lucifer Fell, times in Heaven were happier -  _Michael_ was happier - and it had been several thousand years since any new fledglings were born, so no one knew how to react. Gabriel snatched up the little figure instantly, despite Raphael's protest, and proclaimed that  _he_ would raise him, as "two are not enough." Raphael was exasperated, Lucifer delighted, and Michael argued right there in front of everyone that two tricksters  _were_ enough, thank you very much. 

But Gabriel and Lucifer won. Raphael effectively ignored Castiel, but Michael helped raise him in order to give the fledgling some semblance of common sense. After Gabriel left and then Lucifer Fell, no one knows the exact course of events, but the youngest brother was suddenly lost in the sea of other garrison members. 

Though they never spoke, Hael fought on his side during the civil war. She never cared much for Raphael anyway and there was something distinctly personal and heartbreaking about that war that left everyone else an outsider. Now she is down here, lying awake in her small bed, staring at the ridged ceiling. She was never a soldier, but now she is certainly no angel, either. 

She rolls over and goes to sleep.

 

 

At night her dreams are haunted by the phantom pain of torn Grace and her brother attempting to protect her as Raphael tears out her feathers. 

 

 

With money collected from work, they buy an inexpensive television. One day they rent a film from this device called a Redbox located at Cassie' job (where he has recently been promoted to manager) and settle onto pillows on the floor to watch it. The title is  _It's a Wonderful Life_ , which holds a character named Clarence, and it makes her brother very sad. 

She tries to ask, but he once again evades the question. The silence that follows makes her uncomfortable, so she says, "I visited Earth once between my creation of the Grand Canyon and now. Humans dated it the year Seventy, I believe, and I took the vessel of a young girl with unusual hair the color of the sun. I walked among those of Masada for a day and when all eight hundred souls arrived at our Gates, I was ready for them." She looks out the window towards the sky where the stars shine bright, scattered across the expanse of blackness that she can no longer see into the depths of. "They were so afraid that it lingered into death, so I touched each of them in turn and took away their fear. Now that I have Fallen, I believe I understand how they once felt."

If humans ever arrive in sudden flocks, this is traditionally a practice, though it was a duty that usually went to Michael. The Armenians, the Jews, the Bosnians, the Tutsis. Sometimes fear is so great even Heaven alone does not cleanse it. But she walked through that crowded garden in the clouds and for them, she recreated the mountain during its peak of glory for all to live together if they wished. Every angel has that sliver of Heaven he or she hides in, and Masada was hers. 

"That mountain still stands," Cassie says, turning off the television and ejecting the film. Hours’ worth of moving pictures caught on such a slim disk. Humans truly are singular creatures. "Along with remains - of the buildings, I assume. Much the way your Grand Canyon does."

She turns to him and smiles, small and perhaps a little sad. "Is it still beautiful, too?"

He tells her it is, and she thinks about how there is something beautiful in mortality and human ruin. When they rebuild their wings, she promises herself she will take him there.

 

 

The sunset blooms in the colors of wildflowers beyond their finger-smudged window and in the apartment next door, Maggie Summers plays Mozart on her old piano. Hael wraps her warm blanket tight around her shoulders and stares out at the building beyond where the gold light catches glass and metal and the whole town glows in the dying of an old day. In the swallowing of time. She can spend hours here when she wants, watching these forever humans with their lives going by and discussing plans with a reluctant Cassie about fixing home. He's so afraid of breaking it again. She thinks their best chance is to simply try. 

 _Trying_  is free will, isn't it? she reminds him, and he doesn't answer. 

Until hours later he says, "Sam and Dean showed me what free will should look like, but Michael is the one who introduced the concept to me." 

She turns around in surprise. "Michael?"

"All the archangels knew what Lucifer was supposed to do," he answers, running his fingers through his messy hair. "Of course, they fought all the time - all of them, not just he and Michael, contrary to popular belief - but no one wanted to believe that. And most certainly not Lucifer, despite all his arguing. Michael once told me it would never happen, or at the very least he wouldn't  _let_ it happen, because free will could allow them to change the outcome. Then Gabriel left because he saw what was coming and after Lucifer Fell - I was there - Michael just turned around and told me he was wrong and that he was sorry because free will is an illusion. That was the last time I spoke to him." He pauses, but before she can say anything, he continues, "Free will is particular in that it is as deadly as it is good. Sometimes it leads two brothers to avert the Apocalypse. With it, all I seem to do is destroy."

He is so self-hateful, she realizes, and notices for the first time how very small her youngest brother looks in his wingless, human body wearing a sweater a size too large. They both are weak and fragile and one push off the cliff of her creation could be their downfall. She takes a seat next to him on his bed, facing the window, and wraps one of his hands in both of hers. "But you were there too," she says. "You could have helped either side, and you worked to end it. Look outside - look at the setting sun, Castiel. It may not be yours in the way the Grand Canyon is mine, but because of you people are here to watch it. Your free will led to a legacy of survival, not one of destruction.”

He doesn't answer, gaze shifting instead to the window where the wildflower sunset still paints the clouds. Then he turns back to her and says, "Metatron cannot be allowed to get away with this, Hael."

She pulls her hands away from his and throws her arms around him, smiling into the junction where neck meets shoulder. "Let's go home, Cassie," she whispers quietly, and his arms wind around her, too. 

Outside the sky begins to fade into dusk and it's time to go home. If it takes a while, Hael doesn't mind. 

**Author's Note:**

> Season four/five/six/even fucking seven Castiel was way too fucking smart not to figure out that Dean made a dumb decision this season. I mean, really. He's Cas.
> 
> Also this was originally supposed to be all about Hael and ended up being a lot about Cas anyway.


End file.
